Our Little Cocktail Party.

BEFORE WE GET STARTED: THIS ENTRY IS CHOCK-FUL OF LINKY GOODNESS TO OTHER BLOGS AND WEBSITES. IF ONE OF THEM IS YOURS AND YOU DON'T WANT A LINK TO BE LISTED, PLEASE MENTION THAT IN THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW AND I'LL CORRECT IT. I'VE TRIED TO ONLY LIST LINKS THAT I KNOW ARE OKAY TO PASS ON, BUT I MIGHT'VE ACCIDENTALLY INCLUDED SOMETHING I SHOULDN'T HAVE. IF THAT HAPPENED, LEMME KNOW AND I'll SET IT RIGHT.

So, yesterday I had my first visitor to "word" forwarded from Chicago Bloggers.com.

I thought I'd mark the occasion by doing a little introspection about the other visitors to my blog, today. I was SO excited to get listed on CB. I think it's amusing that I didn't get a visitor from it, until a week or so later. Maybe that site doesn't get a whole lot of traffic, after all.

Regardless, Welcome, Visitor from Chicago Bloggers.com. I hope you found something amusing/ interesting/ or otherwise worthy of a re-visit, in my blog.

And now some info about the rest of you...

Did you know, that on average, this blog gets hit between 30 - 50 hits a day?
Or that we get 60+ page views a day?

And some visitors tend to come back over and over again. (Which makes me want to keep coming up with new material, to give them something to look at.) Typically, a visitor scans the first page and doesn't dig much deeper into the sight. Which is no surprise, considering all the words that regularly get dumped on this front page. (I get all of this info from my sight tracker. It tells me when you guys are around and what city you're in, but not who you are. So, don't feel too spied upon.)

I get loads of activity on the weekdays. But this joint is dead on the weekends. No surprise there. We're all to busy with our weekend lives to read each others blogs all weekend long.

I get regular visits from Pompano Beach FL, Plano TX., and I have two or three visitors from Canada. (I assume they're friends of my good friend, Chantale, who offers me up some linky goodness at her blog, Drove to Chicago. Which you can visit, by clicking here. Chantale is a big fan of the Windy City and that blog is her journal of the year that she's spending, saving and prepping for a permanent move here. She has a lovely way of posting interesting or amusing photos. And her emo blog is worth noting, too. But I'll let you find your way there, on your own.)

I get visits from my friend Corey, in KY. My roommate peeks in from time to time. (Probably to see if I'm bitching about him. - sometimes I do.) My old friend from high school, Bran, also checks in from time to time. Whenever I get caught up in an Anti-Bluegrass State funk, she reminds me that there are good people there, after all. (Speaking of which, kudos to my homestate for electing their first Democratic governor in years. I call that progress. Even though I know my entire family is probably very upset by it.) Another old friend from college, Ernie Chen, checks this blog from time to time. He's a filmmaker in his home country of Malaysia. I like to think that this blog has an International following. ("We're very big in Canada and Malaysia!")

A little closer to home, I get visits from my good friends Crescent and Chip and Hendo and Megan and Mr.Gilmore and the gorgeous gals of the Belmont Burlesque Review. (I know because they either comment on the blog or mention something that they saw here, when I see them.) Up North, another old friend, Elsie, checks in periodically.(She was the person who twisted Hendo up into such knots in the Comments section of the T-Shirt contest. 259 Comments between the two of them! Well done, Elsie!) Occasionally, I see that Matt and Ian have dropped by. They like to use the links from their own fine websites to visit mine. (And they'll be happy to know that the "Fight Communism" poster is flying, large and in charge, in my office.) By and Large, the majority of my visitors are here in the Chicago area.

Also, my good friend Madge Hixx visits on occasion. (From her, I learned the value of a Daily posting. An active blog is a happy blog.) Madge posted a link to this blog on her own blog, Chicago Stories, which attracted the interest of my new Internet buddy, Morris. (Today, Morris offered up a very nice mention of this blog on her own, Power Love. That made my day!) Morris is new to my blog and I'm glad to have her here.

My lovely, new girlfriendy person comes here too. I might not have mentioned it, but I've been talking about her for months now (without actually naming her). Not all of it has been gumdrops and rainbows. Sometimes I got very frustrated with her. But all of that seems to irrelevant, considering how happy she makes me, now. (Somewhere in this paragraph is a clue to deciphering which blog entries were about her. I mention it, in case you're one of those puzzle solving types.)

Beyond my friends and regular visitors, I also get frequent random hits by folks doing Google searches for all sorts of odd things. I regularly get hits from people researching the following topics (in the order of most popular searches to least)...

-"I got Wood" t-shirt from Shaun of the Dead.
-Michelle LaMour and Burlesque.
-"Air Kentucky" t-shirts and other memorabilia.
-"Life Aquatic" t-shirts.
-Borat news articles and the pic in his green, thong, bikini.
-fucking
-Some British person who posts or performs as Mr.B.
-Lately, people have come here for "mouse hunting tips"

And occasionally, I find a friend doing a vanity search on themselves that leads them to some mention in here. (You know who you are. Wink Wink!)

The only people that will never know about the blog are my actual family members. I honestly don't think that I could come here and post as freely and as honestly, if my parents or family were constantly peeking in. They're all pretty uptight conservatives and I'm not ready for them to know me this well. Maybe someday. But probably not.

And there's this one guy in town who pretty regularly harasses me on the Improv message boards. I'd kinda like to keep HIM out of my blog for a while, too. He used to read my last blog and then quote it online, claiming my anecdotes for himself. That always used to infuriate me.

I think that it's good for me to take stock and recognize and thank the people that visit my blog, each day. This isn't meant to be a private diary. I intend for you to come here and enjoy this. It's a little party, that you might not have realized that other people were attending, too.

I see it as a collaborative process. You have some control over what happens here, by what you say in comments below or in real-life meetings. Without you guys coming here regularly, I am just a very quiet voice, screaming into the empty void and hearing nothing in return. I am very glad that you're all here. (Even you, Plano TX and Pompano Beach, FL!)

Listen, grab a cocktail from the front bar, throw your coats on the bed and gather around the organ for a nice Sing-A-Long. You're welcome to stay here as long as you like.

Cheers,
Mr.B